Miscellaneous and Useless Information

Also last month, I went to a San Francisco Bay Area ACM meeting on component-based user interface design, which turned out to be a talk on UI design patterns. Aha! It turns out that SAP has developed an extensive collection of design patterns for their domain of business applications, and they have an extensive web site for designers. The main points I got from the talk:

SAP has 3 types of patterns

patterns for frequently discovered user requirements

patterns for composing UIs from components

patterns for executable UI components

The only way to drive adoption of patterns is to build them into the tools that designers and developers use

SAP validates their patterns through user testing

Patterns do "freeze" UI innovation overall, but the patterns themselves will evolve over time

There is always a tension between those who use the patterns and those who deviate from the patterns to innovate on the UI